


The Design

by SansasStarks



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SansasStarks/pseuds/SansasStarks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bran Stark is new at university, friendless and shy. When he meets a 3rd yeard student at a bad indie gig, though, Bran is transformed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Design

For Bran Stark, the first day of university was nervewracking, like the first day of the year at school but with the pressure amplified. As he rolled towards his first lecture, a lecture introducing the physics with astrophysics course, he felt a little sick with the nerves. Bran had always felt nerves, ever since he fell.

He’d done well during his A-Levels, and he’d got to the university he’d wanted to, Manchester (which he’d chosen mostly due to the music scene and the amount of football he could watch in the area, but he doesn’t tell anyone that), and he was doing a course he was interested and that he was good at. He wasn’t sure what there was to feel nervous about, unless it was the expectation from people to do well that weighed on his shoulders.

As he rolled the way from his new room to the lecture hall, Bran was surrounded by cries of people familiar with each other, the laughs of reunited friends and the hugs that came with them, and he realised how scared he was of spending three years without making a single friend at university. 

His room-mate was perfectly nice, but Bran didn’t feel like he could be friends with the tall blonde boy, Jaime, so different to him. 

Who wants to go up to a kid in a wheelchair and start a conversation? Not many, except to give the usually sympathy. Bran was sick and tired of all the sympathy he’d got since he fell, but he was even more sick of the lack of friends he’d had past his siblings.

\---------------

The lecture hall was stuffy and the lecture itself was relatively unchallenging, and Bran soon found himself getting bored, and as usual when he got like this, he started to doodle. His doodles were always half drawing and half actual designs for buildings, which he enjoyed doing but didn’t think he was particularly good at. The buildings he drew were widespread: he drew stadiums or music venues or museums, and sometimes he took an area he knew well and worked out where strategic points for a castle would be, and he drew them.

Today he drew a large mansion, taking inspiration from some of the castles he’d drawn, and he’d got most of the basics done by the time the lecture had ended.  
Another lecture (this one an introduction to the astrophysics part of the course), and Bran had finished his mansion. He’d send it to his little brother Rickon, who loved Bran’s drawings and was also a more promising architect. Rickon was a wild boy, prone to drinking as much at weekends as their older sister Sansa had at their age, but he really was interested in designing buildings.

\---------------

Bran’s hobby at 14 had been to climb up buildings to see them from a different angle, until he’d fallen from the roof of his own home, the building he know best. He fell 4 storeys and broke his back. Since then, he’d been in a wheelchair, and his only way to get his architectural outlet was his imagination and through photos, but when he tried to study  
architecture in his own time, he didn’t have the motivation to work hard enough.

He was good at physics, though, and had found a love for space as well, so he’d chosen his course based on that. It still pained him that he couldn’t be an architect, though. He’d always dreamt of having one of his ideas made real, a museum to house something historical or a stadium to fill with screaming football fans, but he wasn’t good enough.

\---------------

He spent a week in a lonely haze, broken only by his phone calls to school-friends and family. On the Saturday, he decided to go a concert at the Student Union, where some indie band were playing. He’d never heard of the band before, but it was a reason to get out and do something and not stay indoors.

The band were okay, Bran supposed, as they got to the end of their set. He was at the bar watching them all concert, as was a tall brown haired girl who’d looked disdainful from the first minute. Bran thought she was pretty, but didn’t pay her much attention (a natural reaction to pretty girls: Bran had limited contact to girls outside his family and their friends) until she turned to him.

“They’re shit aren’t they?” she shouted over the driving guitar coming from the stage.

“I don’t know, I reckon they’re ok.” Bran answered, just as the band finished their set, to muted applause. “I’m Bran,” he said. This girl had talked to him. She’d talked to him of her  
own accord. She chose to. For Bran, this was valuable.

“Meera.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Chapter two should be up soon.


End file.
